Playlist: Listen, my figgy pudding pals ~ Christmas 2020

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In the words of Moby Grape… listen, my friends! Yes, it’s the (hopefully) monthly playlist presented by George’s Journal just for you good people.

There may be one or two classics to be found here dotted in among different tunes you’re unfamiliar with or never heard before – or, of course, you may’ve heard them all before. All the same, why not sit back, sip a glass of mulled wine, munch on a mince pie and listen away; for in the words of Noddy Holder, ittttttt’s… well, I’m sure you know what comes next…

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CLICK on the track titles to hear them

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Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra ~ A Christmas Festival (1959)

Peggy Lee ~ Christmas Carousel (1960)

Sarah Vaughan ~ Snowbound (1963)

Barbra Streisand ~ Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (1967)

Bob Hope and Raquel Welch ~ You Make Me Feel So Young (1967)¹

He 5 ~ Silent Night (1969)

José Feliciano ~ Feliz Navidad (1970)

Morecambe and Wise, Pan’s People and Brenda Arnau ~ Big Spender (1970)²

Kate Bush ~ December Will Be Magic Again (Bongo Mix) (1979)

Slade ~ Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (1985)

ALF ~ ALF’s Christmas presents (1986)³

Only Fools And Horses ~ The Shooting Party Gatecrasher (1986)⁴

Dick Van Dyke ~ T’was The Night Before Christmas (2008)

Annie Lennox ~ God Rest You Merry Gentlemen (2010)

Donald and Daisy Duck ~ Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (2012)

Sophie Ellis-Bextor ~ My Favourite Things (2020)

Basil Brush ~ White Christmas (2018)

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¹ From a 1967 Bob Hope-fronted United Services Organizations (USO) performance for American troops serving in Vietnam and originally broadcast in Hope’s Christmas TV special of that year  

² As featured in Eric and Ernie’s December 25th-broadcast, 1975 BBC Christmas show; you may recognise singer Brenda (or B. J.) Arnau – and her voice – from a scene in 1973 James Bond film Live And Let Die, in which she serenades Roger Moore with the title tune, before his chair, yes, drops through a trapdoor in the floor

³ From ‘Oh, Tannerbaum’ , the first-season seasonal episode of furry-alien-living-with-an-American-family sitcom ALF (1986-90), first broadcast on December 22nd 1986

⁴ An unforgettable sequence from ‘A Royal Flush’, one of the many classic Christmas specials of (surely) Britain’s most popular sitcom, originally broadcast by the BBC on December 25th 1986. 

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